Hello Civic Fizzers!
I didn’t really think this day would actually come. When the sign-up list went around, I was one of the last people to sign up, and September 2013 seemed like a lifetime away.
Well, perhaps, it was a lifetime away. Since we gathered last Summer, I had the good fortune to live in Tirana, Albania for nearly a year – and what a year it was! The bookend events of that year for me were the 100th anniversary of Albanian Independence celebrated in November 2012 and the Presidential Elections held in June 2013.
In between those two events, I engaged in what was the most meaningful and significant work I have ever done. Civic education work – civic education work informed by our time together at Tufts.
Working with the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, I developed and delivered over forty hours of training on effective policy debate to up and coming political leaders for the five largest parties in Albania (side note: over 66 political parties operate in Albania, a country the size of Maryland with a population of about 3 million). This training culminated with three nationally televised debates, the last of which was live!
Given that the majority of political discourse in Albania at the time we started this work was vituperative and consisted mainly of ad hominem arguments, I was terrified that once the cameras started rolling the debaters would revert to this type of discourse, particularly after I found out they had been getting “advice” from their party leaders. But they didn’t. They didn’t engage in name-calling or eye rolling or walking off the stage. They were professional, poised, and pleasant to each other. In short, they participated in civil and rational debate, they shook hands at the end of each debate, and they joined each other for coffee and cocktails when the cameras stopped rolling.
But they never gave up the positions of their parties. Nobody completely capitulated to the arguments of others, but nobody engaged in long-winded diatribes, either. It is worth saying again: they engaged in civil, rational debate. The key word here is debate. Not dialogue. Not conversation. Not deliberation. Debate.
Why did this potentially pivotal moment in Albanian political discourse happen? Well, I’d like to think it was because I am such a good teacher :), but that’s not it. I think the main reasons why this project went so well were 1) the U.S. Embassy provided a space for critical, rational debate to flourish; 2) we developed a format that restricted the ability to engage in unproductive personal attacks; and 3) we made it clear we did not expect the debaters to agree on policies, but we did expect them to respect others’ right to different opinions.
Where am I going with this? Well, I’m going to Chantal Mouffe and the arguments she makes in The Democratic Paradox. I read this book some time ago and when I read it, I don’t think I quite grasped the significance of Mouffe’s adamant argument that democracy thrives when healthy debate among opposing sides provides true choices for citizens to consider. I was more enamored with the ideas of deliberative democracy – of moving people to consensus. Mouffe argues deliberative practices do not strengthen democracy but rather weaken it (at least that’s how I remember her argument).
Perhaps she’s right. Given my experiences in Albania, I understand the importance of agonistic practices to democracy and, by extension, the need to include the study and practice of debate in a civic education curriculum. I would even argue that the ability to engage in effective policy debates is more important to getting a democracy up and running or getting a democracy back on track than the ability to engage in deliberation or dialogue. Deliberation and dialogue may build relationships, but a good debate is more likely to move citizens to action.
Maybe if our own political leaders could be taught to engage in rational critical debate we could get our own democracy back on track. Or maybe not.
Take care and argue well!
Christy
